Poetry
Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias
Not translated into English
Juan de Castellanos · 1589
Opening lines
A cantos elegiacos leuanto
Con debiles acentos voz anciana
Bien como blãco ciſne q̃ cõ canto
Su muerte ſolenniza ya cercana
To elegiac songs I raise
With feeble accents an aged voice,
Just as the white swan that with its song
Solemnizes its death now drawing near
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
An immense poem in octaves, in which an old priest tells what he has seen and what was told to him by those who were there. It begins with Columbus, follows the discoverers of the Antilles, then the men who sailed up the coasts of Tierra Firme and the rivers of New Granada. It shows the foundations of towns, famines, betrayals among captains, Aguirre's revolt, the sack of Cartagena by an English corsair. Each group of men has its elegy, and the author names, dates and locates like a clerk who had chosen verse.
Context
The first part appeared in Madrid in 1589, from the widow of Alonso Gómez: it is the only one the author saw in print. The following three had to wait, two until 1847, the last until 1886, and the four appeared together only in Caracas between 1930 and 1932. The discourse devoted to the English captain who plundered the coasts was cut from the third part by the censors. The author had begun a prose chronicle and put it into verse at the insistence of friends who wanted Tierra Firme to have its epic, as Chile had its own.
Who it is for
Several thousand pages in sixteenth-century Spanish, with no French translation. No one reads the whole: modern editions offer selections, and that is where to begin.
Prizes and reception
The longest poem in the Spanish language, with one hundred and thirteen thousand six hundred and nine lines, and one of the sources that the history of the conquest cannot do without.